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Reading the story about Nintendo’s new 3DS, which displays 3D images and facilitates three dimensional gaming without glasses actually caused me to breathe a sigh of relief. At the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo last November, I walked past a screen showing an image of a plane flying through the air. The image of the plane wasn’t on the screen but a few inches in front of the screen and seemed to have depth. A double take revealed that I wasn’t seeing things and I immediately reached for my camera… before realising how stupid that was.

Not having seen anything on the market that claimed to portray 3D without glasses since returning, I assumed that integrating this sort of technology into a marketable device must be too expensive or cumbersome, at least for the time being. I actually assumed I had mis-remembered or, worse, hallucinated it. Not true, if Nintendo’s latest effort is anything to go by, hence the sigh of relief.

The image at the robotics show wasn’t the best quality 3D. While it clearly appeared free of the screen, it didn’t seem to have the solidity that I’ve come to expect from 3D experience – although I couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t down to the lack of immersive experience I’m used to at the Imax, for example. With a smaller screen, it’s possible that the Nintendo device will suffer similar problems but whatever the case, I’m looking forward to seeing what it can do.